HEADACHE

HEADACHE “My head is splitting open!”
“It feels as though a machine were grinding my head to pieces!”
“If you can’t stop these headaches, I am going to commit suicide!”
“I feel as though a vise were squeezing my brain out!”

What Type Of Headache?
Following are the major categories and types of headaches seen in most people:

Migraine - Migraine is one of the most common headache conditions known to mankind, affecting 18% of adult population. These headaches are called vascular headaches as they are linked to changes in blood flow to the brain. There are two major types of migraine headaches: Migraine with aura or classic migraine and migraine without aura or common migraine. 10 - 20% of the people who have migraines experience an aura: they see flashes of light, blind spots, or zig-zag lines before the headache starts. Other symptoms include nausea, vomiting, tingling in the lips and face, and sensitivity to light. Attacks can last anywhere from a few hours to a full day or more.

Cluster headache - Cluster headaches are more common in the spring or fall in middle-aged men who smoke heavily. Cluster headache pain is generally very severe. It develops behind or around one eye and rarely moves from side to side. This type of headache builds quickly in about five minutes and lasts between forty-five minutes and an hour.

Cervicogenic headache - Cervicogenic headache gets its name from its origin from the neck, which is very common. Now, it is well known that there is a connection between the first three cervical nerve roots and the fifth cranial nerve in the cervical cord. So, we understand that muscle spasm or nerve root irritation in the neck can cause the pain in and around the eye and in the face by means of this fifth nerve, otherwise known as the trigeminal nerve. Sometimes, the headache arising from the neck is also associated with neck, shoulder, and arm pain.

Tension type headache - This is the most common type. These headaches occur when muscles in the head, neck, upper back, or face are tense for a long period. A tension headache may be set off by physical, mental, or emotional stress.

Dangerous Headache
Remember most headaches are not signs of serious illness. Immediate medical help is advisable if headaches:

- Strike suddenly and cause severe pain.
- Are accompanied by vision changes, confusion, loss of consciousness, numbness, or any similar changes.
- Wakes you up during the night.
- Become more frequent or severe.
- Follows a blow to the head.
- Occur with fever or a stiff neck.
- Occur in young children or older adults.
- Repeatedly affect the same area such as an eye or ear.
- Are accompanied by convulsions.

Treatment Techniques
The kind of treatment you receive will largely depend on what has been found out about you and your headache, but the most common element to almost all individual treatment plans will be learning. You will learn:- How to recognize early signs of headache and avoid their occurrence.

Medications For Treating Headaches
In general, with your cooperation and consent, we must decide to approach your headache by the abortive, also known as “symptomatic”method (trying to stop a headache once it has already begun) or by the preventive method (trying to prevent the onset of the headache) by treating you daily, similar to the principle concerning the use of birth control pills. The preventive approach is most often used when the headaches are frequent and occur with regularity.

Chronic daily headache - Chronic daily headache affects ten million people in this country. It affects more women than men. A few headaches per week gradually become daily, sometimes without stopping. The pain is mild to moderate, usually on both sides of the head and described as pressing, squeezing, and occasionally throbbing.

Drug rebound headache - Drug rebound headaches are those headaches that are actually caused by the frequent use of pain killers, prescription, and over-the-counter medications. Although Aspirin, Tylenol and many prescription pain killers (Codeine, Demerol, Barbiturates, Ergot, and Caffeine) are helpful to the occasional headache sufferer, the overuse of these drugs can often make an existing headache worse.-

Warning headache - Rarely some headaches (about 2%) present as a warning signal of: Disorders of the eyes, ears, teeth, jaw, sinuses, allergies, temporal arteritis, brain tumor or aneurysm.

Treating Headache Without Drugs
Even though it is a common practice to give drugs for almost all types of pain and drugs have represented the mainstay of traditional headache treatment, it is important to try to find safer and equally effective means of relieving or preventing headaches without resorting to the use of drugs.

Psychotherapy: It means treating the mind, but in a broad sense psychotherapy can include any method of lessening tension, anxiety, or depression.

Physical therapy: Simple therapies may help relieve headache pain or prevent headaches completely. Understanding various lifting techniques and understanding how the neck functions will go a long way in helping your headache.

Injection therapy: Various types of injections and nerve blocks have been used for management of headaches and have been proven to be successful. These include epidural steroids and various types of nerve blocks, occipital nerve blocks.

Biofeedback and self-regulation: Biofeedback training is a means of teaching you to develop conscious control over various autonomic bodily functions. The tightness of your neck muscles or even the temperature of your fingers can be altered through control over your body.

Exercise: Many of the patients who are joggers suggest that a headache can be aborted by jogging. Some even suggest that they have suffered far fewer headaches since taking up a regular exercise program. A regular exercise such as jogging lasting for fifteen to twenty minutes, four times a week, for patients who are physically fit may be helpful to both mind and body.